


Between Caveman Instincts and Idiot Lizard Hindbrains

by Solannin



Series: Two Sides [1]
Category: Fast and the Furious Series, Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
Genre: Alpha Luke Hobbs, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Frenemies, Getting Together, M/M, Omega Deckard Shaw, Slow Burn, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-10-14 12:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20600594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solannin/pseuds/Solannin
Summary: Hobbs and Shaw had been working together on and off for a while, and they made a good team even if they'd each sooner throw themselves in a river than admit it.  And then Shaw ended up in a river for a totally unrelated reason, and between that and forgetting to pack the one damn item he never forgot...well, Luke Hobbs hadn't even known that he was working with an omega, but he was about to find out.  Shaw wasn't sure that 'well' was precisely how it was going to go, under the circumstances.





	1. Shaw:  Forgotten

Bloody _hell_, where was it?

Deckard gave up digging and upended his bag on the narrow bunk, making no attempt to be careful as he shook it out and rummaged recklessly through the contents and then went back and emptied the hidden pockets as well. And still couldn't find it. That oh-so-critical little tin of pills that should be right fucking _here_ and somehow it _wasn't_ and this was _not_ the time for this. Or it wasn't going to be in a couple hours, anyway.

He twisted and grabbed his still-sodden vest. His emergency supply had taken a swim right along with the rest of him, but he always kept that handful of pills in a baggie so maybe—

He wanted to scream when he saw the faint traces of discolored sludge in the crumpled bit of flimsy plastic he pulled out of the inner pocket. Maybe he'd been in such a damn hurry when the call had come in this morning that he hadn't even bothered to confirm that the baggie was airtight.

He was a fucking idiot. Not that he'd been planning to end up in a half-frozen river in Siberia, obviously, but he'd known his heat was coming, and this shite was amateur hour. And given the rest of the sludge in that river, he didn't even dare lick out the remains of his pills and cross his fingers dosage-wise. Not that it would last until pickup, regardless, not when the best case estimate was still three days out. 

A shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with his memory of ice-cold water. The mood suppressants for him...whatever. He'd gone through unfulfilled heats without them before, and it was fucking unpleasant, but he'd manage. Hell, if he just needed to take the edge off, he could probably do it by spending the time until their extraction came wherever Hobbs was. Deck hadn't exactly appreciated the realization, but as irritating as Hobbs could be, his idiot lizard hindbrain liked the man just fine and accepted his obnoxiously alpha presence as soothing.

Well, actually Deck was pretty sure that his idiot lizard hindbrain would have him in Hobbs' lap in under seven seconds given half a chance. That was one reason why his idiot lizard hindbrain got no say in anything, ever.

Deck gave his bag another futile shake. Under other circumstances he was actually pretty sure that Hobbs would be willing to tolerate being used in that manner. Well, not the lap part, obviously, and Deck would sooner throw himself back in the river than let that happen anyway, but the presence part. He'd never seen Hobbs treat an omega as less than, couldn't say he'd ever seen him put down any of the omegas they'd tracked harder than anyone else—although, to be fair, it was Hobbs and he put everyone down hard—never heard any of that 'place' shite out of him, none of that. So while Hobbs probably wouldn't like it, he'd also probably go on being as insufferably _decent_ about it as most other things. Biology was biology and damn blizzards and terrorist cells that didn't have the sense to set up anywhere with a decent road system anyway.

But those 'other circumstances' would absolutely include pheromone blockers that would let Hobbs keep his nose in one of his books and his attention firmly off the in-heat male omega who'd been so damn stupid it hurt hanging around in his general vicinity. It wasn't right or fair or anything else to force an alpha into a confined space with an omega that they had zero interest in without those, especially not for any length of time. And Deck's pheromone blockers were as well and truly gone as his mood suppressants. 

He slammed his empty bag down onto the cot again. _Damn it_. This whole thing was bollocks. The two of them made a good team, even if he'd sooner slit his wrists than admit that out loud, and he hated the idea of losing that just because of his damn cock up.

The door banged open; Hobbs not bothering to knock. “Hey, are you finished with the show—” He cut himself off before Deck could snarl at him, staring at the supplies scattered across the cot and floor. “Jesus, princess, did you misplace your tiara?”


	2. Hobbs:  Revelations

For an instant Luke's hand twitched towards his belt, because the look that followed his teasing question was straight up murderous, even for Shaw. He'd taken his gun off when they'd arrived, though, and besides that they were supposed to be on the same side these days. “Peace, truce, whatever,” he said instead, holding up his hands. “I was joking. I just want a damn shower, not to start World War Three.” Not that they weren't bound to get into a fight at some point before they were retrieved, three days was too long for either of them to last without deliberately trying to wind the other up, but right now he was wiped enough from the op that he just wanted to get cleaned up and grab some hot food before he crashed. He might not have gone for a swim—why he'd ceded the shower to Shaw first; he wasn't a complete asshole—but his flight had started seven hours before Shaw's this morning, and the temperature swing between LA and Siberia had been brutal.

Shaw's jaw twitched.

“Come on, what did you forget?” Luke asked after a moment when Shaw didn't seem inclined to break his glare. In his experience, a mess like that guaranteed that something had been left out of a pack that definitely shouldn't have been. “Maybe I've got a spare I can loan you.”

The sound Shaw made in response was somewhere between a gag and a laugh, but before Luke could ask he shook his head and grabbed the items that had fallen to the floor, tossing them into the pile on the cot. “Never mind. Forget it.” He jerked his head at the door on the far wall. “Shower's all yours.”

“Okay,” Luke said slowly, wondering what that had been about as Shaw was suddenly sliding around him and heading out into the main room. Twenty minutes ago Shaw hadn't been any more annoyed than he was that they were stuck in this odd little two-room cabin. Sure, he'd prefer to be on a plane back to London, just like Luke would rather be heading for LA and his daughter, but shit happened. No one was shooting at them, and between the generator just outside the door and the reasonably well-stocked cabinets, they'd be fine for a couple days. Hell, if they pushed the mismatched furniture in the main room up against the walls, they even had enough space for that fight without risking reducing everything in the place to kindling.

He pulled a change of clothes out of his gear bag and then grimaced as he took in the cot below it. He hadn't been paying much attention when he'd tossed his stuff into the bunkroom earlier, but like most everything else in this place it appeared to have been furnished by someone's-army surplus, and there was no way that any of the cots were meant to accommodate anyone over six feet and about two hundred pounds. So that was going to be annoying. It wasn't likely to have anything to do with Shaw's anger, though; Mighty Mouse probably hadn't even noticed.

After his shower Luke headed back out into the main room to see if Shaw had managed to turn the pile of vegetables he'd started on into actual food, only to find the man absolutely eviscerating the last of a stack of potatoes on the far counter while the chicken simmered ignored on the stove. Luke threw the vegetables that had already been chopped into the pot and then tapped the counter lightly. The counter a good six feet away from Shaw, because he wasn't too sure that a knife between the ribs was out of the question right now. “Shaw? Hey, seriously, what's up? You take a bad hit down there or something?” It was a possibility, maybe...he'd seemed fine when he'd swum up out of the now-submerged truck, albeit cold enough that he hadn't objected when Luke had hauled him onto the dock by the back of his vest, but cold could mask a lot of injuries and Luke couldn't come up with much else that might be wrong. Still, the bastard swam like a fish, and Luke hadn't once seem him have issues in the water before this.

He hadn't this time either, as Shaw swiveled to face Luke looking more than a little startled. His expression turned uncomfortable a moment later, though, and his fingers twitched to make the carving knife he was wielding take a quick loop around his hand. “I—fine. Whatever. It's going to be pretty bloody obvious in a couple hours anyway. Just...sit down and shut up until I'm done talking.”

'Don't tell me what to do,' was on the tip of Luke's tongue, and if Shaw had only been fiddling with the carving knife he wouldn't have thought twice about saying it, but Shaw was pretty obviously genuinely out of sorts and damned if he could come up with any reason why. He held up his hands again and moved back to the table, turning a chair so he could face him. “I'm sitting. Talk.”

“Don't tell me what to do.”

Luke rolled his eyes.

Shaw's jaw worked for a moment, and then he spun the carving knife again before driving it point-first down into the cutting board and crossing his arms across his chest as he leaned against the counter. “Short version: I buggered this up but good. Somehow I managed to forget my stash of pheromone blockers, and my emergency supply went and dissolved in that damn river.”

Luke stared. That...he didn't even know what that was. It was an explanation for a few things, he supposed, because while Shaw registered as null to his senses as was typical for a beta, he'd always thought that the man was bizarrely aggressive for that classification. Granted that generalizations were just that, there were exceptions to every rule, etcetera—as a man with a child not far from puberty he could recite the standard line with the best of them—but a suppressed alpha designation made a lot more sense. Why Shaw would bother with suppression to the extent that Luke hadn't realized his actual nature was more of a question, but he did a lot more stealth work than Luke did, and there were plenty of situations where a null scent would come in handy. Luke didn't have to ask to know that Shaw wouldn't blink twice at the possible heath consequences of long-term suppressant use if he thought the results would be advantageous. 

“All right,” Luke said slowly. “I don't have any blockers with me, but it shouldn't be a big deal.” He did own a bottle, perfectly correctly prescribed by his doctor, since the fact that he didn't do stealth work as often as Shaw didn't mean that he never did it, but he didn't like using them and they stayed in his medicine cabinet unless circumstances forced the issue. He shot Shaw a quick grin. “I mean, we aren't exactly living in caves these days.” Luke had worked with any number of other alphas over the years, and if there was generally some kind of posturing involved, it wasn't like he and Shaw didn't do that anyway. Throwing in an extra set of pheromone markers wasn't likely to make the least bit of difference.

Shaw's forehead creased and then he shook his head and groaned. “How you've survived this long is completely beyond me. Your blockers wouldn't do me a bit of good even if you had them, you twit, they're _alpha_ blockers.”

“Well, obviously.” Luke's brain caught up with what Shaw had to mean by that about half a second after the word left his lips, and he did a double-take. “What the fuck? You mean you're—”

“Welcome to the conversation, twinkle-toes.”


	3. Shaw:  Preparing

Deck drained the last of the soup from the bowl and set it on the floor before surveying the bunk he'd decided to claim. It was the furthest from the main room that he could get, literally tucked into the corner of the bunkroom against the far wall. And under one of the few windows which was not a spot he'd normally have picked since the seal on the window wasn't the greatest, but given how uncomfortable he was going to be for the next couple days anyway, a bit of cold air wasn't going to make things any worse. And this position also kept him as far from the entrance to the loo as he could manage, although the fact that the only way to get there was through this room wasn't great since Hobbs wasn't likely to want to take himself outside in this kind of weather.

None of this was great since this whole place was way too small when it came to pheromone spread. It was still the best he could manage.

He had some time left before anything started, no matter what the crawling feeling along his skin was trying to convince him of as the mood suppressants began to wear off, and he pulled some spare blankets and pillows out of the wall cupboard and stacked them at the head of the cot. He'd have to change them out a few times over the course of the next couple days; better to have the spares to hand. The dozen or so cots in this room meant that there were plenty of those spares, at least. Small mercies.

Given the size of the cots, Hobbs would probably have ended up sleeping on the tattered daybed serving as a sofa in the other room regardless of what was going on with Deck, so that was another thing sorted. It would be be better if Hobbs took the rest of his things in there as well so he wouldn't have to pass through this space except to access the toilet, but Deck couldn't hear anything from the other room. As far as he knew, Hobbs was still sitting in the kitchen gaping like a stranded fish.

His lips twitched. That had actually been kind of funny. Not _fun_ given that after the major revelation he'd also had to say that he was going to be in heat for the next couple days, and there wasn't a damn thing that either of them could do about it, and sorry about the fuck up. He was pretty sure that he was going to be apologizing more for this than anything else he'd done in the past twenty years.

Well, almost.

At least this was something he _could_ apologize for.

He shook himself. Hobbs' gobsmacked expression had been the most amusing thing that had happened tonight, however low that bar might be.

Deck surveyed his nest again, added a rolled-up blanket to put at his back, and then sighed. Once again it was the best he could manage, but this was still going to suck. Particularly since he'd skipped at least his last four heats, and he was pretty sure that if he counted it up he'd find out that it had actually been five. He didn't really want to count it; that was the point at which even if he had his suppressors he was right at the limit of what they could do, and this was likely to be damn intense.

There was a light tap at the closed door as he was debating if he wanted to take his bowl back to the main room and encounter Hobbs again, and then, “Shaw? Are you awake?”

“No. Bugger off.”

The door opened slightly. “Can I talk to you?”

Shaw sighed and shot him a scowl. “Technically, since slitting your throat is still on my to-do list.”

“Gonna stay there, too, because you can't reach that high.”

Despite everything, a startled laugh caught in Deck's throat as he caught a hint of a grin on the man's face. Taking the piss out of each other felt normal, at least, and never mind that this situation was anything but. 

Hobbs took a quick look around the room and then indicated the bunk opposite the one Deck had claimed, a bit further from the window and well out of arm's reach. He wasn't actually an idiot, no matter how often Deck might insist the opposite. “May I?”

“Knock yourself out,” Deck said with a sigh, turning and taking a seat on his own bunk. And then shifted until his back was against the window and he could rest his arms on his knees. He owed Hobbs a conversation, at least, since the man hadn't really been in a state for one when Deck had blurted everything out.

“First of all, I'm sorry. That was a shitty way to react,” Hobbs said as he sat down. “I was just...really surprised.”

Fuck decent people. “Well, I can't say I was expecting anything good,” Deck admitted. Gaping at him for the ten minutes it took for the soup to finish enough for him to be comfortable grabbing a bowl and retreating to the bunkroom had been fairly tolerable, all things considered.

“How...?”

When Hobbs showed no sign of being ready to finish his question, Deck rolled his eyes. “Well, when a mummy and a daddy love each other very much,” or, in his case when Mummy was a first-rate manipulative bitch and Daddy was a dumbarse who'd never been able to wrap his head around the fact that an omega was capable of manipulating him, “and they decide—”

Hobbs snagged the pillow from the head of the bunk he was sitting on and flung it at him, and Deck batted it aside automatically.

“Seriously, if a grown man with a fucking child needs me to draw him some stick diagrams, I'm done with this conversation.”

“Could you not be a jackass? Just for maybe ten minutes? How have you even....” He trailed off with a shake of his head. “I know I didn't see anything in your military files, and granted that you and your sister seem to bounce in and out of computer systems like it's going out of style, but being an omega is a pretty major thing to cover up.”

“When it comes to the military stuff, it was never in there in the first place,” Deck said after a minute. At this point there was no good reason not to explain. Maybe if Hobbs got it through his head that Deck had been dealing with this successfully for the past twenty-some years he'd be willing to keep working with him after this mess was over. “After...well, there were a couple of reasons that I wanted—” needed— “to be somewhere else back then, and I was never good for much else outside of a fight, so after Dad died and it was safe to leave Owen and Hattie I went to a recruiting station. And when they were done staring at me like I'd grown another head, and I'd beaten every test they could find to throw at me including a couple that I'm damn sure that they made up on the spot, that arsehole doctor still decided to reject my application. According to him I was 'clearly unsuitable for any role which might require combat capability.'”

Hobbs snorted. “Did you leave him alive?”

“Didn't touch him. Not that I didn't want to.” He'd been about half a second from beating that idiot's head into the floor the way he had some of the alphas back in school who'd tried to put him in his 'place' after he'd presented, but even then he'd known that it wouldn't solve anything. Even if the man's actions had been completely illegal given the regulations around status and equal treatment and all of that shite, there had never been any chance that anyone would do anything even if Deck had spread the word about what had happened. No matter what anyone said publicly, the creep would probably have received private commendations for keeping a 'fragile' omega out of 'dangerous' situations.

“Out of curiosity, what did he think you were suitable for?”

“Hell if I know, though it's probably just as well I didn't ask.” Given the smug look on that arsehole's face, the answer would probably have been 'breeding.' At best. His shoulders twitched. “Anyway, I went and got some blockers and made a couple quick fixes to my school records and no one gave me a second look at the next recruiting station I went to. Had to play fast and loose on the medical since no drug can change a blood test to show real beta markers, but they were hard up enough for recruits that no one looked too closely. I mean, what kind of omega applies to join the military in the first place?”

“And no one's noticed you taking blockers for what, twenty years now? Twenty-five?”

“Well, no one's cared since Brixton set me up, but even before that it wasn't a big deal.” Granted that that had been because no one had had a clue what kind of blockers he was taking, but he took the wins where he could. “I got tapped for special ops pretty quickly, and a lot of guys—alphas, obviously—used blockers so their presence wasn't a dead giveaway on missions. All the military supplied us with were the cheap bulk kind with the list of side affects three kilometers long, so a good two-thirds of us had personal orders coming in on the side. If they'd realized my records said 'beta' or that I was buying mood suppressors too I'm sure there would have been more questions, but it wasn't the kind of thing that ever came up.”

“Mood suppressors?”

He looked puzzled, and Deck waved a hand. “Blockers to stop pheromone generation, mood suppressors to hold off heats.” It probably shouldn't be a surprise that Hobbs had asked; most alphas in combat roles were happy to hit rut and get the aggression boost that came along as a bonus even if they weren't giving off the pheromones that were supposed to help them attract a mate. There had been so many 'friendly' arrangements to deal with the rest of it after the fight was over that Deck had had to get creative to avoid them.

“You haven't been suppressing heats for tw—”

“Why, yes, that is completely your business,” Deck snapped at the horrified tone. His body was his damn business, and if he was willing to tolerate Hobbs asking questions, that didn't mean that he was about to put up with the man having _opinions_ about how he handled things. No matter how shite his handling had been on this particular occasion.

“Shit.” Hobbs shook his head. “Sorry, yeah, obviously it's not. I just meant that that can't be healthy. I know pheromone blockers can have some ugly side affects on their own, I hear about it from my doctor every time I go in despite the fact that I haven't even used any in a couple years, and I can't imagine mood suppressors are any better, especially if you don't....”

He had the sense to shut himself up before Deck could do it for him, and Deck ground his teeth. “It doesn't work like that, no. Back then my usual routine was to skip a couple, arrange some leave somewhere where no one would look at me twice when it was time for the next, and then find someone willing to screw my brains out without asking questions when I got there. Got it out of my system so I could go back to my unit and get on with life, and since everyone's stories about what happened on leave were lies I could make up whatever I wanted and not catch any flack. These days it's even easier; there's no one tracking my time but me, and believe it or not there's an app for that.” 

Hobbs choked. “Seriously?” A flicker of a grin crossed his face. “Welcome to the twenty-first century, I guess.”

Deck relaxed a little in return. The fact that Hobbs looked more amused than offended was a good sign, at least, not all alphas would take it that way. There was an app, but it was only one in a string of them that he'd used because they kept getting mysteriously shut down. 

Hobbs' amusement dropped away abruptly. “Wait, how did you manage that in prison? There's no way they let you take in a supply of blockers, and even if the doc would supply you some they'd have to know what kind.”

“Out of curiosity, how many prisons have you been in that _don't_ have drug problems? I have easier access to black market stuff on the inside than I do the outside most days.”

“Believe it or not, spending free time in prison is more a you kind of thing than a me kind of thing. Something you might want to reflect on, for the record.”

Deck flipped him off and got the American version of the same sign in return.

“Although talking to you does make me seriously question the state of the criminal justice system,” Hobbs admitted. "And not just the American one, either."

“You're not wrong to do so.” Witness how many members of the Shaw family who were currently supposed to be in prison and were very much not. He wasn't really sure what his own status was after Mr. Nobody had got himself involved—he should probably look into that, now that he thought about it—and he was pretty sure that Hobbs genuinely didn't know about Owen being on the loose again, but missing Mum's escape had to be complete willful ignorance.

“That's not really an option here, though,” Hobbs said after a minute. “Your app, I mean.”

“No. I did check.” Being in Siberia wasn't a major hurdle, if they'd been near Novosibirsk or Vladivostok or any place with an actual population he'd already have it handled, but between the blizzard and the fact that they were in the middle of nowhere his options were limited to zero. Well, one, technically, but even if Deck might have been willing to ask.... “And you ain't into guys or omegas,” he said bluntly.

“How did you know that?”

He actually sounded startled, and Deck scoffed. “Take your pick: I have a fully functional nose, you practically gave me a soliloquy way back when on the plane to Russia, and oh, yeah, _I've met my own little sister_.” Who for whatever reason had felt the need to give him her own soliloquy on Hobbs'...attributes...and never mind that she'd never been up for more than a bit of fun when it came to other alphas anyway . He got the distinct feeling that she'd been paying him back for something with that, even if he wasn't at all clear on what, and just the memory of the conversation made him want to bleach his brain on general principle.

“Oh. Right. Yeah.” Hobbs sounded more than a little hesitant when he continued. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yeah, I'll be fine. It's not going to be fun—for either of us, sorry again about that—but I've been through this a few times before.”


	4. Hobbs:  It Begins

Running was typically not his favorite pastime, but right now Luke really, really wanted to go for a run. Mostly because it would get him the hell out of this place and away from the pheromones that were not only keeping him half-hard but also fighting a ridiculous sort of caveman instinct that was insisting that he needed to go in there and satisfy the omega. And never mind that said omega was both uninterested and had been right about Luke not being interested.

Sort of, anyway.

It was complicated.

But the white-out outside made even stepping more than a few feet from the door virtual suicide, and none of the push-ups or sit-ups he'd done in the six hours since waking up to the start of a heat in the next room over were doing much to burn off this damn energy. And there wasn't a single thing worth lifting in this place.

It wasn't just the pheromones, either, because Luke didn't _like_ hearing Shaw thrashing around and knowing that he was in pain and not being able to do anything about it. Sure, the two of them gave each other crap pretty constantly, thoroughly enjoyed knocking each other around a room whenever the opportunity presented itself, all of that, but Shaw was still...he was about the only person that Luke would willingly work with on missions these days, put it that way, and he was pretty sure that the same was true in return. It wasn't right to sit around and do nothing while your partner was hurting.

Omega or not.

Luke was still having a hard time wrapping his head around that, and never mind that there was no hiding what was going on. He'd thought that Shaw was oddly aggressive for a beta, but outliers existed, and the military was a perfectly reasonable place for an outlier to end up. But an omega?

Okay, true, there were sometimes omegas in the various terror cells and international whatever-type-theft gangs he was called upon to bring down, but only because they were bonded to the alphas of the group. Even if he wasn't stupid enough not to take precautions when he had one backed into a corner—anyone could fire a gun, and strong protective instincts were a characteristic of omegas—they were never the ones to refuse a surrender if one was offered. When omegas masterminded crimes you were looking at grifting or computer fraud or something along those lines, not blood and violence.

Shaw was technically plenty guilty on the computer crime front, he supposed, but that was so minor in comparison to the rest of what he could do that it was barely a footnote. Between guns and bombs and a willingness to throw himself into hand to hand combat that rivaled Luke's, it had taken putting him through the roof of a building and then dropping a good portion of that building _on_ him to bring him down, and that was after he'd ripped through most of the team who were after him. Luke included. If that building hadn't come down, Luke wasn't sure that he'd have liked Toretto's chances.

Despite all that, Shaw hadn't been what Luke would call cowed the next time they'd encountered each other, either. Hell, the little bastard had somehow arranged a transfer from a CIA black site to a standard maximum security prison, and damned if Hobbs had any idea how that had happened. If he hadn't used Mr. Nobody's distraction to complete his escape, he'd no doubt have found something else just has effective.

Luke was currently refraining from noticing that the man's seventy-two year old mother was somehow no longer in custody. It seemed safer on all fronts.

None of that squared with being an omega, and Luke still had no idea what he actually thought about any of it.

There was a half-cry, immediately bitten off, from the other room, and Luke clenched his fists. He thought that this was a hellish situation, that's what he thought, especially since things had been steadily getting worse as Shaw progressed into full heat, and the rest of it he could figure out later. He might not be able to give Shaw what he needed—or at least even if Shaw hadn't been entirely right about his preferences, Luke hadn't been in any shape to get into it when the subject had come up, and now he had no idea what he could offer that wouldn't absolutely destroy their partnership—but he did know enough to know that having an alpha present should help.

Assuming Shaw would let Luke anywhere near him. Luke had been through to the bathroom once, but that was it, and even if Shaw had to have known he was there, he'd stayed curled on himself and hadn't so much as acknowledged Luke's presence.

He didn't give himself time to think about it, heading immediately for the door and tapping lightly on the frame to announce his presence rather than trying to minimize it as he had before.

“Fuck. Off.” Shaw ground out, a distinctly rough edge to his voice.

Well, he was fully conscious. Maybe that was a good thing? “Can I talk to you?”

“Pretty sure we had this conversation before, and it ended with you losing large amounts of blood through your jugular.”

It sounded like he was talking around gritted teeth, but he hadn't repeated the order for Luke to get lost, so Luke stayed where he was. “Well, that's what you wanted it to end in, but you still aren't much more than knee high and so far I haven't had any problems.” A pause. “Please? If it's not going to make things worse?”

This time the pause was on Shaw's side. “If you touch me, I will bloody _gut_ you.”

“No touching,” Luke agreed. First of all because he had no doubt that Shaw was armed and willing to use whatever he had, and secondly because his half-erection was likely to get a lot more obvious as he approached to the point where it would be difficult for Shaw not to notice even with his back to Luke. Assuming he couldn't already smell some of the situation, which he probably could. Luke started to take a step forward and then hesitated. “Do you want a glass of water, or more soup, or...,?”

Shaw muttered something that somehow managed to be both unintelligible and still insulting.

Luke rolled his eyes. Some things never changed. “I'll just grab a couple glasses.” That only took a minute, and then he made his way slowly to the bunk he'd been sitting on before, pausing only for a minute to put one on the crate sitting by the head of Shaw's cot. Shaw didn't say anything as Luke took up the same position that he had earlier, pulling a pillow onto his lap belatedly. Not that that really helped anything. “Is this going to make things worse?” he checked.

“No,” Shaw admitted quietly.

Luke let out a quiet breath of relief.

“So what stick diagram do you want this—”

He broke off with a gasp and Luke started to reach out automatically before he remembered himself and flattened his hand against the cot instead. His mind spun, trying to find something to say to distract the other man. Distract both of them. “You know, when I presented I was pissed off about the whole thing,” he offered when Shaw stopped shaking again. Maybe that wasn't the right thing to talk about right now, but under the circumstances it was the first thing that had sprung to mind, and he couldn't just sit here and stare.

Shaw made a quiet noise that might have been interest. Or disgust. Or possibly a prelude to another threat, but since he didn't continue Luke chose to interpret it as the first.

“It's...I think you know I'm right in the middle of my brothers, and then Lisa's the oldest of all of us?”

“You've mentioned your sister a couple times, mostly when you're talking about your daughter, but I never figured out who on Samoa were you actual blood siblings and who were part of a horde of random lunatics that just happened to be in the area,” Shaw admitted slowly, voice even rougher than before. “At least aside from Jonah, who seemed to be the only sane one in the lot.”

“Are you saying that because he saved your sister's life or because he punched me?” Luke asked curiously.

“Could make a case either way, really. Made twenty pounds off Hattie on the punch, though.”

Luke managed a quick laugh despite the situation and pretended not to notice when one of Shaw's hands snaked out from under the blanket and grabbed the glass of water. “I have four biological brothers. Jonah's the oldest of us—well, the oldest after Lisa, like I said—and then Kal, then you've got me, Mateo, and Timo's the youngest. Mama never closed the house to anyone, though, so I always thought that having the whole lot of cousins and neighborhood kids and everyone else through at all hours was normal.”

Shaw shivered again, and Luke looked around.

“Do you want another blanket?” There was a stack of them by the cot, and if the windows in this room were of the same quality as the ones in the main room, Shaw probably had a draft coming down on him.

“It won't help.” The glass of water returned to the crate, the level lower by about half. “What about presenting?”

Luke hesitated and then let it go. At least he'd taken the water. “Jonah and I were real close growing up. You'd have thought it would have been him and Kal since they were only a year and a half apart, but we had a cousin literally two days older than Kal and the two of them were always inseparable.” At least up until Dad had gotten Jobe killed, anyway. “I was about eight when Jonah presented as a beta, and I just remember him shrugging and keeping on keeping on like it didn't even make the least bit of difference. I mean, puberty sucks for everyone, but the way he acted you'd almost have bought that the whole thing was just another Tuesday. A year or two later it was Kal and Jobe, also betas, and if they weren't quite that calm about it, they weren't bouncing off the walls, either. And then I went and presented as an alpha, and I swear it was like I went from feeling normal to like my whole body was on fire overnight. Like my _brain_ was on fire. I was never one for picking fights for no good reason or any of that kind of shit, but all of a sudden I was mad at the world, and if Jonah hadn't kept yanking me out of stupid arguments by the nearest available limb I'd probably have had every kid at school hating my guts inside of a week. So I'd be mad at some random kid for some bullshit reason, mad at Jonah for not letting me wipe the floor with the kid, mad at myself for wanting to in the first place instead of being like my brothers...I swear, it took me six months to even start to feel normal again. Back then I think I'd have done anything for a beta classification.”

Shaw gave what might have been a chuckle. “The mood swings were pretty bad for Hattie too, in the beginning. I mean, Owen was always a little shite and I was used to having to pull him out of one ridiculous situation or another, but the first time my little sister got getting into a knock-down drag-out with the three arseholes on the corner? Bloody ridiculous.” A pause. “Not that she didn't do a fair job of it, all things considered but she was just too small to finish them off properly.”

“So you did?”

He twisted enough to give Luke an annoyed glare. “One of them practically ripped her arm out of its socket! Three teenagers against one little eleven year old girl!”

Luke would have asked if he'd murdered them, but where Shaw was concerned that wasn't a funny joke. Shaw was not entirely sane when it came to his siblings, and Luke was painfully well aware of that fact. “Eleven is young,” he said instead. “At least I was a few months past thirteen.” Not that Jonah probably wouldn't have appreciated him being a bit younger since he'd already matched his older brother for height by then and nearly by weight as well which had made getting between Luke and whoever his target had been a little rough on him.

“Yeah. That's what Owen was too—he'd actually just presented as a beta a few months before—and I was fourteen when I went through it.” A snort. “Talk about making a mess of Dad's head.”

Shaw had made a few less than complimentary comments about his father before in Hobbs' hearing, and Hobbs tilted his head. “He sounds like about as much of an asshole as my father.” It wasn't a question, and it sure as hell didn't require a response, but the two of them didn't really do a lot of talking outside ops. Normally by this point they'd be flinging heavy objects in the other's direction. Right now he was sure that they'd both prefer that.

“Eh, not sure about yours, but mine was mostly an arsehole with more muscle than brains who had a very specific vision for his life, and when everything went pear-shaped he couldn't cope. And by pear-shaped I mean—” Shaw jerked forward again, curling in on himself as he convulsed, and Luke waited helplessly for the spasms to pass.

“Can...can I try something?” Luke as as he slowly stilled again, breaths coming in ragged gasps. “Without getting gutted, I mean?” Becuase this did violate the no-touching order he'd agreed to, and while something Lisa had told him once made him think that it might help, he wasn't particularly interested in eating steel.

Shaw was silent for long enough that Luke almost decided to pretend that he hadn't asked, and then, “Warning before stabbing. Take it or leave it.”

Considering how fast Shaw was, a warning probably wouldn't be enough to save an injury, but as long as he didn't put any vital organs in harm's way....

Luke shifted to sit on the floor with his back to Shaw's cot and then reached up slowly. And then thought better of anything that even approached a grip and curled his hand into a loose fist instead, letting his knuckles touch the back of Shaw's neck lightly.

Shaw jerked, and Luke braced for a hit, but he stopped himself just as quickly.

“Better, or worse?” Luke asked cautiously.

“Go fuck y'self.”

Which was definitely not 'worse,' and Luke settled in.


	5. Shaw:  Common Ground

There Hobbs went again, being bloody decent, and Deck kind of wanted to shoot him in the forehead.

Well, what he actually wanted was for Hobbs to screw him into the mattress, preferably more than once, and never mind that this cot didn't actually have a mattress and barely fit Deck as it was. He hated heats. And he certainly wasn't going to ask, not when Hobbs had excused himself directly to the loo when the erection he'd been sporting since he'd come in here had apparently finally become too much.

According to Deck's nose Hobbs would be finished soon, and Deck couldn't decide if he wanted him to return to his seat at the head of the cot—and more importantly his hand to the back of Deck's neck, which as much has he hated admitting it had made it much easier to keep his insides cooperative—or get the hell away and stay there. They'd been sitting in silence for most of the past couple hours, Deck, at least, drifting on the edge of consciousness since he hadn't managed any sleep before his heat struck despite exhaustion from yesterday's mission, but he'd come alert after Hobbs had moved and doubted that he'd fall off again for a bit.

The shower cut off, and a few minutes later Hobbs came back out. “Do you want something to eat? Eggs or leftover soup, or...?”

A small part of Deck wanted to glance over his shoulder to see if Hobbs felt even half as awkward about this as he did, but that small part of him could bugger off. Which was a good suggestion, now that he thought about it. “Bugger off.”

“So whatever, then.”

Hobbs actually sounded amused, and Deck tried to remember where he'd left his knives. Stabbing him and burying his body in a shallow grave would absolutely be the easiest solution to everything that was happening right now, and it would solve the later awkwardness problem as well.

They were probably still in his vest.

It had to be around here somewhere.

His idiot lizard hindbrain whimpered as the alpha left the room, and Deck made damn sure that that sound was strangled in its tracks well before it could reach his throat. Unfortunately, and more critically, his insides twisted with _need_ on the heels of that whimper, forcing himself to double forward once again. Not that he could go far, not when his forehead was already an inch from the cool wall and his knees were halfway to his chest. He had to have missed at least five heats to be feeling this bad, and as much as he wasn't about to admit it he was a little bit glad that Hobbs was willing to put up with his stupidity and stick close because if he wasn't this would be even worse. Unfortunately there was at least one day left of this shite, more likely two under the circumstances.

More than that and Deck would just stab himself and bury himself in a shallow grave, and never mind how nonsense the logistics were on that one.

Footsteps would have given away Hobbs' return even if his smell hadn't, and there was a tap as something was set down on the crate serving as Deck's bedside table. Something else that smelled good, probably leftover soup. Damn it.

Hobbs chuckled as Deck grabbed the bowl without looking, scratching Deck's shoulder lightly when Deck twisted to glare up at him. “You know, there was this feral cat that 'Teo tried to adopt when we were kids, and despite the literal claws I think he was actually friendlier you are. And I say that as someone who still has a couple scars.”

“You want new ones?”

“Anytime.” A pause. “Although I'd feel kind of bad hitting you back right now, so maybe a rain check?”

“Arse,” Deck couldn't help but mutter. As Hobbs settled back into position and his knuckles returned to rest against the back of Deck's neck the pain subsided again to a more manageable level, though, and that bloody lizard hindbrain gave a happy little sigh. Also damn it.

“How did this happen before?” Hobbs asked curiously, around what sounded like sips of his own soup. “I mean, it sounded like you had a pretty good system in place, and you aren't _quite_ stupid enough to put yourself through this intentionally.”

“Bloody hilarious.” Deck took a sip and then another one quickly because apparently the shivering and spasms and everything else he'd been fighting through had been eating up his energy a lot faster than he'd realized. “No great secret. I did—do—have a system, but nothing's perfect.” Note the current situation, and never mind that this one had been caused entirely by his own stupidity. “Especially in the beginning, back when I was still figuring things out and there was no technology to help things along, I'd take myself somewhere where no one knew me and that I wouldn't stand out and then do some hunting to find a willing partner. Thing is, since I was mostly using military transport I was still on pheromone blockers when I got there, and I couldn't afford not to be on them when I got picked up again either, which complicated things. And we didn't get a lot of leave so I didn't have the time to be choosy. Now and I again I just wouldn't find anyone likely, and other times I would, but then they turned out to be....” His shoulders twitched. “There's not much I say 'no' to, but when I say it I bloody well mean it, and starting heat doesn't change that. Had to break some bones on a few idiots who thought they could force the issue, and when that happened I wasn't generally in any shape to go out looking for a replacement.”

The knuckles against his neck pressed in harder for a second as Hobbs swore.

“Better me than someone else. At least I _can_ make the point.” A lot of omegas couldn't, unfortunately, especially when an alpha decided to start getting aggressive. A snort. “Some of 'em were just arseholes, the others I still can't wrap my head around because you'd think when some random omega shows up looking for no-questions sex, anybody with even a single functional brain cell would be insisting on protection not trying to refuse it.”

Hobbs scoffed, but it didn't sound right, and when Dex twisted to look over his shoulder he found the man's jaw clenched. “What?”

“Like you said. At least you could. Lisa couldn't. And all of us were too young to be of any use.”

Oh. Shite. “Sorry.” There wasn't much else he that could say. It was one thing he hadn't had to worry about for Owen or Hattie, at least, not that they hadn't given him fits for plenty else over the years. “Was someone?”

“The one useful thing my father ever did. Although that was probably just because it would have made him look bad if he hadn't.”

Deck flipped around so he could actually look at Hobbs without requiring contortions. Which of course meant that Hobbs could look at him in return since he'd turned sideways to eat his soup, and Deck was probably going to regret it, but it wasn't like he didn't have plenty of other regrets right now.

Hobbs shifted his touch obligingly to deal with the new position without comment, and Deck refrained from swearing at him by only the narrowest of margins. The man wasn't just decent, when he wanted to be he was bloody _nice_.

“You really don't like him,” Deck said instead. It wasn't a question and didn't require an answer any more than Hobbs' statement about his father, but Hobbs shook his head.

“Not one damn bit. He was in and out when I was a kid, kind of obvious I guess since I have two younger brothers, but he never bothered with anything useful like fixing up the house for Mama or bringing her grocery money or anything like that. It was always Lisa sewing for the neighbors and Jonah wrangling the rest of us that helped her keep things together. And then when we were older, I guess I would have been almost eighteen since I remember Timo terrorizing everyone with his learner's permit at about the same time, he started coming around more. Still not to help Mama, but to take me and my brothers and some of our cousins out with him. At first it wasn't much: repo this car here, break it down over there, that kind of thing. Jonah was the only one of us who was anything special mechanic-wise, but all of us were at least tolerable given the number of times we'd had to rebuild Mama's van over the years, and at first it seemed pretty okay. Kind of nice, even. Right up until one of his jobs ended in a hail of gunfire and it turned out that we hadn't been repo'ing anything, it had all been straight up car theft. The bastard was looking to put together a new crew after he'd lost most of his last in a sting.”

Deck choked on a sip of soup, because if he knew anyone who _wasn't_ likely to be involved in car theft—well, not unless he was in the middle of a chase, anyway, in which case all bets were off—it was Luke Hobbs.

“Yeah. Funny.” His tone implied anything but, and his jaw was clenched again. “We all made it out in one piece that time, not that Dad seemed to give a damn about anything except that we hadn't brought in the car he wanted. But when I tried to talk to the others about it, they wouldn't listen. Not even Jonah; he was so damn happy that Dad was showing up for once, was proud of him and the shit he could do with an engine, that he didn't even care."

Deck couldn't help but feel a flash of sympathy for Hobbs' oldest brother because he'd been the one to play parent for his own siblings most of the time—never mind that his father had been around; it wasn't like he'd been worth anything—and it had been a damn difficult position to be in even with just two of them. Trying to hold it together with four younger siblings, even if they'd had a mother of the actual motherly sort? Eeesh. Of course, Deck would never have put up with anyone pointing guns at Owen or Hattie when they were little kids, he didn't even much appreciate it now, so that was a bit different.

“We had a run of simple jobs after that, some cars that came in through quasi-legitimate channels for Jonah to fix up, and for a few months I convinced myself that it was somehow all going to be okay,” Hobbs continued. “But then another job went off the rails, and this time we weren't so lucky. Jobe took two in the chest and died where he fell, and Kal nearly took one in the head trying to get to him. He would have if Jonah and Timo hadn't jumped on him, and Jonah got clipped in the shoulder as it was. And Dad still didn't give a damn. Didn't even care that we had to take care of Jonah ourselves because if he went to the hospital he'd have been arrested, or that if the bullet had struck a little more to the left it would have hit an artery and he'd probably have bled out. He had a crew now, and fuck it if his kids got killed, he wasn't going to stop. So I turned him in.”

“Shite.”

“Yeah.” He shook his head. “I couldn't stay there after that, and Lisa had wanted to leave since....” Another shake. “Well, anyway, we left together. I'm sure Lisa must have exchanged a few letters with Mama over the years, but I hadn't so much as sent a postcard to anyone there before we showed up on their doorstop.”

“Do you now?” Deck asked curiously. Not that it was any of his business, but Hobbs' family had seemed weirdly close to him. Sure he'd die for Hattie or Owen or Mum, although he'd do his damnedest to make sure a lot of other people died first, but it wasn't like they got together for tea every other Tuesday. His visits to Mum in prison had been the closest to regular contact that they'd ever had, and now that she was out who knew where she'd taken off for.

“Are you kidding?” A flicker of a smile crossed Hobbs' face, banishing some of the earlier darkness. “Mama'd have my hide if she didn't get to chat with Sam at least once a week now that she knows she exists. And I talk to Jonah and 'Teo and the others when they're around.” He went quiet again, picking up his soup bowl to finish it off. “What happened with your dad? You said something before about things going pear-shaped.”

Deck scoffed. “Pear-shaped in his opinion. He wasn't what you'd call clever, and as near as I can tell his plans for his life involved marrying a pretty female omega, having a statistically acceptable number of children that he could trot out at appropriate times—all the boys to be alphas like him and all the girls to be omegas like his wife, obviously, and not that he could spell 'statistic'—and eventually attaining the exalted rank of supervisor at work.” He snorted. “Mum is pretty, I'll give him that, and I suppose three of us is about right, but beyond that? I wasn't more than a couple months old the first time Mum jetted off to the continent on one of her schemes, and I've no doubt he stared after her for a solid fortnight wondering what the hell happened.”

“Toretto said she was pretty terrifying,” Hobbs offered. “Your mother, I mean.”

“Oh, she is. And I shouldn't spit on Dad so much about her manipulations since she can make me do any bloody thing she wants me to too.” It was probably best that he didn't see her any more often than he did, all things considered. “But while she was off doing whatever we were left at home with him, and saying that he wasn't fit to care for children would be an understatement. At the best of times he was an arsehole, at the worst he was a violent, abusive bastard.”

Hobbs swore quietly.

“I never much cared when he went after me, but the battle lines were pretty solidly drawn the day he took a belt to Owen for sicking up at nursery and having to be picked up early. A three year old with welts on his back; I was fucking seven and I knew that wasn't right.”

This time Hobbs wasn't quiet, and it ended with, "I hope to hell your mom put a bullet in his brain.”

“She would have, if she'd known, I think," Deck agreed. "She does love us. But we never....” He shook his head. “She was in and out so much, and we—I—wanted her to be happy and stay with us. So the bad stuff never got brought up. And mostly it was just me that got hit; I figured out pretty quickly to take the blame for whatever I could, and he figured out pretty quickly that it was easier to beat me than to fight me to get to one of them. Especially since Mum wasn't really a kid person either and thought it was a good idea to send me primacord for my tenth birthday.”

“That's a joke, right?”

“She sent Hattie C4.”

“Fucking hell.”

“Yeah. She's pretty amazing.”

Hobbs shook his head. “Remind me to keep your entire family far away from my daughter.”

“Probably wise,” Deck had to acknowledge.

“So your asshole father blew up mysteriously?” he asked. “Not that I'm not in favor, for the record. Fuck child abusers.”

They did tend to agree on the important things, annoyingly enough. “Drank himself to death,” Deck said with a shrug. “He took it pretty hard when Owen presented as a beta—he'd given up on me long before I presented so that was kind of irrelevant—and then when his daughter was the only one of us who turned out to be an alpha....” He waved a hand vaguely. “Between that, the fact that he was too much of a piece of shite to hold a job for more than a year at a stretch which put paid to all of his supervisory dreams, and Mum stopping coming around for him when her heats stopped," or possibly when she'd found someone she liked better; Deck didn't even _want_ to know that answer to that one, "he just sort of gave up. And then a couple years later so did his liver.”

“You know, if there was any alcohol in this place I'd say we should drink to shitty fathers,” Hobbs said after a minute.

“I'd take you up on that,” Deck said, and then frowned. “This is bloody Russia, how is there no alcohol anywhere?”

“Got me.” Hobbs' hand dropped away and he started to push himself to his feet, and this time Deck didn't strangle the noise of protest quite fast enough.

“Sorry. I'm just going to put the dishes away and grab some more water,” Hobbs said quietly, fingers brushing against the back of Deck's neck again.

This was why he should have kept himself facing the wall. “S'fine.” It made him aware of a recurrence of Hobbs' problem, though, or the problem that his damn pheromones were causing for Hobbs, anyway, and he shrugged slightly. “If you want I can take care of that when you get back.” It was the least he owed the man, all things considered.


	6. Hobbs: Circling

For a moment Luke had no idea what Shaw was talking about, and then his head snapped back to the figure on the bed. Who'd closed his eyes and tangled his hands in the blanket and wasn't paying him the least bit of attention. Luke stared, his jaw working, but no sound came out.

A minute later Shaw's eyes opened. “What? Did you forget where the sink is?”

“No. Obviously. Jackass. But....”

“But what?”

Luke shook his head. “How can you just _say_ something like that?”

Shaw groaned and closed his eyes again, but rather than replying his shoulders hunched in in a way that made it clear that he was fighting off another spasm.

Luke reached back down to rub his shoulder lightly. “Come on. Breathe.”

“F'k you.”

For an instant an incredibly inappropriate response was on Luke's tongue, but this situation was already such a mess that he couldn't see giving voice to it doing anything but making things worse. A minute later and he could feel the spasms starting to ease off, although Shaw made no move to open his eyes, and Luke patted his shoulder lightly and then headed for the main room. He rinsed the bowls in the sink, poured a couple fresh glasses of water, and then spent a few minutes staring at the doorway to the bunkroom trying to figure out what the hell was supposed to happen next.

Shaw hadn't been wrong about his 'problem,' and it wasn't something that was likely to go away while Shaw was in heat. Well, not more than temporarily, anyway. He could ignore it for a while longer, although that would only take him so far—he could practically hear those damn commercial warnings about erections lasting longer than four hours—but ever since Shaw had filled him in on what was going on he'd been bracing himself for cold showers. A lot of them if he stayed close to Shaw. And he probably would since it was pretty obvious that his presence did help.

Besides, it wasn't like he'd be able to focus on anything else even if he tried to confine himself to the main room. _The Tale of Genji_ wasn't going to cut it, under the circumstances.

Luke sighed. It was just the damn pheromones and his body's caveman reaction to them and he knew it, but Shaw—and Shaw's offer—wasn't exactly repulsive. The man took no shit from anyone, Luke included, which even most other alphas couldn't say, and he was tough enough to back up anything he said. He also shared Luke's opinions on the most important aspects of what they did and why, as much as they both hated admitting it sometimes, was funny as hell when he wanted to be with a grin that Luke enjoyed startling out of him, had amazingly quick hands....

He cut that thought off hard before his mind could drift down the path of what exactly those hands were probably capable of given access to the right part of someone's anatomy.

It was Shaw, and he was armed, and never mind the rest of it.

Luke headed back into the bunkroom and resumed his place, putting the second water glass on the crate close enough for Shaw to grab. Shaw's eyes were closed again, though, and Luke pressed knuckles into the back of his neck lightly. “Are you all right?”

“'m just brilliant.” He opened his eyes. “Do you want...?”

“You don't have to.”

A snort. “If you thought I did, you would be picking up some new scars today.”

Luke grinned despite himself. “That's fair. I'm all right for now, but thanks.”

A nod. “Offer's open.”

“I wouldn't have guessed you were into guys,” Luke said after a minute, not sure if it was the sort of thing he could ask or not. “I mean, you and Madame M seemed....”

Shaw choked, and Luke started to move his hand to thump his back automatically before he realized that he was being laughed at. “What?”

“What are those spiders that kill their partners? It might be fun while it lasted, but even I ain't sure I'd be walking out of that situation in one piece.” A pause. “It wouldn't be real wise to let her have that kind of intel on me, either.”

That was probably true, considering what Luke had seen of her.

“I told you before, what I'm into is getting my brains screwed out with no stupid questions attached so I can get back to my damn life,” Shaw continued. “You generally find more male alphas than female willing to deal that—though I suppose you find more male alphas in general, given the ratios—but that suits me well enough.”

That sounded less like something he was interested in and more like something he dealt with because he had to, and Luke tilted his head slightly. “You were married, though. Right? Presumably you were into whoever that was.”

This time when Shaw groaned it was pretty obviously in response to Luke's statement. “Where did you even—bugger it. The military records. Why I didn't fix that shite right along with the rest of it I'll never know.” One hand released the blanket and grabbed the glass of water, and Luke stayed quiet to see if he'd continue. “Was a bloody stupid decision I made straight out of secondary, call it that,” he said after taking a sip and returning the glass to the crate. “He and I had been classmates since infants school, and he was less of an arse than most of them after I presented. Never had to break any floor tiles with his head, anyway. I didn't have any particular plans after I finished with my classes since I certainly wasn't going to university and Owen and Hattie were still too young to be left on their own even if Dad was less of a threat by then, and when he proposed....” One shoulder twitched. “Seemed easy enough to just go along with it. He wasn't interested in leaving the neighborhood either, and we weren't totally incompatible.”

Luke snorted. “There's a romance novel for the ages.”

“Shove it up your arse.”

“Sounds like that's more your kind of thing.” The words escaped before Luke could really think about them, but Shaw only laughed in response. He did have a nice smile. Damn it.

“Arse,” Shaw said. “Anyway, things were fine at first, we both got warehouse jobs and scraped together enough to rent a cheap flat, but then he got embarrassed after a staffing shakeup got us placed on the same loading dock. Apparently a couple guys starting giving him shite about me shifting as much weight as any of them instead of going off and doing childcare or clerical work or whatever like a good little omega. Total bollocks since two children were enough for me and I had no bloody interest in playing typist, but then it got worse after one twat put his hands on me and I put him in hospital. Suppose it would have been better if it hadn't been our supervisor, but....”

Luke ground his teeth as Shaw shrugged. He knew shit like that used to happen—still did, sometimes, although it was considered far more unacceptable these days—but the matter of fact way Shaw talked about it kind of made him want to hit someone. And never mind that Shaw already had.

“I mean, what did he think I was going to do?” Shaw asked with a scoff. “Go crying to him for help? I was better in a fight than he was, and we both knew it.”

There wasn't a damn thing Luke could say to that, so he rubbed his knuckles against the back of Shaw's neck lightly and kept his mouth shut.

“After a bit of that life got pretty rocky outside the bedroom, and inside it...the sex was okay, but 'not totally incompatible' wasn't enough to establish anything like a bond. After six or eight months of him pushing I got sick of it and moved back home. Didn't even think about the formalities until he showed up one day with a new partner and some paperwork.”

“Sorry.”

“Why? I wasn't. Was a relief if it was anything, and hell if I know why I marked 'divorced' instead of 'single' on those bloody recruiting forms.”

“Had more important things to lie about at the time?” Luke suggested.

“Suppose so. Anyway, I generally go for guys rather than women, but that's got nothing to do with him or ancient history.” He tilted his head to meet Luke's eyes. “You know, I don't remember seeing anything about marriage or divorce in anything I dug up on you, but you've got a daughter so there must have been someone.”

It wasn't a question, but it would have been a fair one if it had been given what Luke had asked, and this time Luke was the one who shrugged. “No great secret; Sam's an alpha baby.”

Shaw's eyes widened. “That must have been a surprise.”

“Understatement, believe me. Her mom ran—still runs, I guess, although she's moved up in the ranks enough that they don't put her in the field anymore—logistics for domestic counter-terrorism teams at the Bureau. We'd crossed paths with a few times over the years before then, but that night we were coming off a rough case and one thing led to another and we decided to have some fun. That was all it was supposed to be, and hell if I know why either of us thought it was okay to skip protection, but about six months later she called me out of the blue to tell me there was a baby on the way.” He shook his head. “From what she said it took her about five months to even notice and then another to wrap her head around it it was so unexpected, and I don't know how long I sat there staring at the wall after we hung up. I mean, I guess I'd always figured I'd have kids at some point, but it was...I don't know. Something for the future. Definitely not something I was ready to take on in three months given the lifestyle I had at the time. And she wasn't in any way interested in being a parent." He felt his lips tugging into a smile and didn't try to stop them. "The second I saw Sam I was in love, and there's no way I could ever have given her up, but damned if I know how I'd have made it work if it hadn't been for Lisa.”

Shaw nodded, and Luke hesitated. It probably wasn't a good idea to say what he was thinking. Actually he was sure it wasn't a good idea to say what he was thinking. The two of them made a good team, and it would be stupid as all get out to do anything that might affect that.

“What?” Shaw asked.

“You weren't _entirely_ right about my preferences, you know.”


	7. Shaw:  Taking the Edge Off

“Oh?” Not precisely creative, but Deck wasn't sure what he could say to a statement like that. It wasn't a lie, though; Hobbs was an absolute shite liar to the point where the average five year old would be able to tell the difference never mind someone like Deckard.

Hobbs shrugged, not meeting his eyes. “I've done as much experimenting as anyone else, I guess. I mean, not so much back on Samoa, it's kind of awkward when not only have you known everyone in the neighborhood for your whole life, their parents are also all friends with your mother.”

Deck shivered a little at that horrible thought. One good thing about Mum being in and out his whole childhood, he supposed, at least he'd never had to deal with anything like that.

“After we moved to LA and I didn't know anyone, though? That was a lot easier, especially since there were so many more options.”

At a guess he would have been somewhere between eighteen and twenty at that point so no doubt that had helped too.

“And I never had any problems with guys,” Hobbs continued. “It was more....”

He actually flushed slightly, and Deck tilted his head. “More what?”

“Male alphas can be kind of a pain to deal with.”

Hobbs still wasn't meeting his eyes, and Deck didn't even try to stop a chuckle as he processed the words. “I'm sorry, I don't think I heard that last.”

“Shut up.”

“Don't tell me what to do.” He lifted his head off his arm. “Wait, where's my phone? That would make a much better ringtone than—”

“Drowned in a river. Nothing to be done. Too bad for you.” Hobbs uncurled the hand against Deck's neck and and flexed his fingers lightly. Not hard enough to force Deck's head down or even give the impression that he was really trying—again, he wasn't actually an idiot—but he pretty clearly had no intention of being useful and finding the phone either.

“It's waterproof,” Deck pointed out, a little surprised that he didn't mind having a hand wrapped around the back of his neck. Knuckles resting against his spine, that was one thing, but someone actually gripping a part of his anatomy that vulnerable should have had him three meters away with a hand on his knife in under a second. All he was really registering now was that the hand was large and warm. Large and warm and would probably feel very nice gripping other things, and absolutely _not_, he was not thinking about that. Not thinking about that _at all_.

“I can fix that,” Hobbs said in a dark tone as Deck got himself back under control. And reminded himself that Hobbs was only talking about his phone.

“Try,” Deck suggested, getting an eye roll before he dragged them back to the original conversation. “So it's just omegas you don't go for? Or both omegas and betas?”

“Omegas more, and it's not...it just...it never seemed like a good idea,” Hobbs said after a minute. “It was never fun.”

“I'll be the first person to say that biology is utter crap, but that's a new one on me,” Deck admitted. “What's not a good idea or fun?”

Hobbs looked away again. “I was there when Lisa came home after....” His hand tightened slightly, and then he shook his head. “Better to say dragged herself home, because he did a lot of damage. And Jonah was the only one Mama took to court with them—I think he was probably too young too, but Lisa wanted him there—but I still remember him smashing the hell out of an old shed afterwards because the bastard got off with barely a slap on the wrist because 'obviously' he wasn't responsible for his own actions at the time. Rut, hormones, all of that shit, and somehow those assholes decided that it was just the sort of thing that happens sometimes. He wouldn't even have gotten the slap on the wrist if Mama hadn't forced the issue.”

“That's bollocks.”

“Yeah, no joke. But then I went and presented and spent a couple months feeling like I wanted to kill people after thirty second _conversations_ with them, never mind anything else. And even after that passed...I don't know. Like I said, I did some experimenting after we came to LA, and hormones and pheromones and all of that are what they are, but it always felt like I was walking on eggshells.” A frown. “Fucking on eggshells? Whatever. Not a lot of fun.”

Deck blinked. “You can be serious.”

“What?”

“I can understand preferences well enough, but if you're seriously just worried that you're going to freak out and hurt someone, you're an idiot. And I say that as someone you've actually tried to hurt.”

Hobbs shrugged awkwardly. “Maybe. Hell, probably, and it's not like I can't do plenty of damage where alphas and betas are concerned too. But....”

There were no 'buts' in that statement, Hobbs was careful when he felt like it to the point where even Deck rarely picked up more than a few bruises when the two of them got into it after one of their missions. Not that Deck wasn't reasonably careful too, crippling your partner was a pretty obvious foul, but in his case he generally only had to check or redirect the nastiest of his strikes, keep the rest of his hits below head-level, and refrain from grabbing anything overly sharp on reflex. Hobbs pulled the majority of his punches despite the fact that Deck almost never let one through, and more than once in a real fight he'd shifted to take a blow that his heavier frame could absorb far easier than Deck's as well. “You're also assuming whatever omega you're sleeping with isn't going to push back which is plenty shite too,” Deck informed him.

“Yeah, I know.” He tapped Deck's neck with his thumb lightly. “I haven't forgotten who put me in the hospital, after all, and never mind that I didn't know you were an omega at the time.” He paused. “Although you did cheat and use explosives. Just for the record.”

“Wasn't bloody cheating when you had backup and a gun you pulled from underneath some random table,” Deck objected. “Still want to know what sort of lunatics work in that office.”

“Oh, no, you are the _last_ person on the face of the planet who gets to complain about people pulling weapons out of random locations,” Hobbs shot back. “Especially since you'd tried to hamstring me with broken glass not ten seconds before.”

“And it served you right; the only reason there was broken glass around was because you put me through a table.”

“'Only reason' my ass, I clearly recall getting kicked through a glass wall—multiple glass walls, in fact—and you started the whole thing with breaking into the office anyway so quit your bitching.”

That was technically true, not that Hobbs hadn't returned the favor with a few of those walls, and Deck freed a hand enough to jab him in the shoulder. “I repeat: don't tell me what to do.”

Hobbs shook his head and gave a low laugh. “Asshole. Knowing I'm being stupid doesn't make it any easier to relax, though.”

The whole thing was still more than a little patronizing as far as Deck was concerned, but, 'unable to relax' was a fair enough reason to avoid sex with someone, he supposed. Not that he ever relaxed, but his was a whole different situation. “You ain't likely to hurt me,” he pointed out slowly. “At least not any worse that I'd do to you in return.”

“I'm not sure that's an advertisement, but it's not something that's escaped me,” Hobbs returned just as carefully. “But....”

“But what?”

“We aren't....” He shook his head. “The stuff we do needs to be done, and between the two of us we're better at it than most anyone else could ever be. I mean, you're a pain in the butt to work with, your obsession with explosives is completely unhealthy, and—”

“Oh, shove it, you're not any better.”

“Would you let me finish?”

“Not bloody likely.” Not when he was being insulted, anyway.

Hobbs laughed. “Fine. As much as I hate admitting it, and I'm never going to say it again, and shut up about the damn ringtones, we're a reasonably decent team, and I don't much want to lose that.”

“Like I'd want _that_ on a ringtone.” He'd had the guts to say it, though, and Deck wasn't about to let some overgrown Yank have that up on him. “But I suppose you're not entirely wrong.” He hesitated. “Wasn't sure that this wouldn't....” He gestured vaguely around and was surprised when Hobbs' eyes narrowed.

“Biology sucks, and I already knew you were stupid. What's happened up to now doesn't change anything.”

Nice right along with decent, and damn him anyway. “It's a little different if we're the ones who make the call and cock it up, though,” Deck said quietly. Not that his body wasn't still begging to be fucked into the lack-of-mattress below him, but this still had the potential to go very wrong.

“Yeah.” Hobbs tilted his head and then held up his free hand. “I'm up for it, but whatever happens here, work doesn't change.”

Which might be a damn hard agreement to keep, but Deck was willing to try, and he closed his hand around Hobbs' and kept his mouth shut about the obvious truth of the 'up for it' comment. “Agreed.”

Hobbs nodded and dropped his hand back to his side. “Uh...not here, though, because there's no way I'm fitting on that cot.”

“Yeah, that would be because they were made for humans.” He looked around. Even pushing two together wouldn't work particularly well, and one shoulder twitched. “Wouldn't be my first time on a floor.”

Hobbs choked. “You know, if you ever get the urge to quit your day job to write romance novels, do everyone a favor and _don't_. The daybed in the other room would be a lot more comfortable.”

That meant no other option for an untouched place for Hobbs to sleep if this did get weird—or weird_er_—but since he was the one offering, Deck wasn't going to refuse. The fact that he had been fucked into a few floors didn't mean that they were his favorite place to be. Deck pushed himself up into a sitting position, ignoring the whimper in the back of his head as he moved away from Hobbs' hand.

“You okay?”

“Bloody brilliant.”

Hobbs clearly found this just as awkward as he did, which was at least something, and the two of them made their way into the main room in silence.

“So what is 'no'?” Hobbs asked as they came to a halt in front of the bed.

Ah. Right. Unlike most of his more recent encounters, this hadn't been negotiated through an anonymous app first. “Protection isn't optional, I'm not interested in bleeding never mind picking up any new scars, and if you hit me I will rip your fucking throat out. Oh, and keep your teeth to yourself. You?”

Hobbs stared.

“What?”

“That's your 'no' list. That some people don't respect.”

“What about it?”

Hobbs opened his mouth and then shut it again. “Never mind. That's fine for me. And I've got a couple condoms in my bag.”

It was on the floor at the head of the bed and it only took him a moment to dig one out and toss it on the table, and then they were back to standing awkwardly. At which point Deck shook his head. Whatever Hobbs had to say about experimenting, Deck would bet that he had a hell of a lot more actual experience with one-night stands, and he caught the front of the man's shirt and tugged hard enough to convince him to lean down for a kiss.

And _shite_.

He was on his back on the mattress before he even registered the movement, which was damn unusual for him but possibly less so at the moment since if there was an opposite to 'not totally incompatible' he had a horrible feeling that he'd just found it. An embarrassing whine escaped as broad hands shoved up under his shirt and blunt nails raked down his chest lightly, and triumph gleamed in the dark eyes above him. Deck's eyes narrowed in return. No bloody way was Hobbs getting away with making him make a sound like that without making some of the same in return, and since he knew full well who was the quicker of the two of them he got to work.

It couldn't really be called a wrestling match when they both wanted things to end in the same way, nor was Deck stupid enough to actually try grappling someone who had to be a good five stone heavier than he was, but by the time Hobbs got a hand under his arse and flipped him onto his stomach both of them had been relieved of all relevant clothing and Hobbs had made at least as many words-without-vowel noises as Deck had. At least.

From his stomach wasn't a great position to up the count in his favor a bit more, but Deck was pretty damn flexible so when he heard the rip of a condom wrapper—

Hobbs bucked when his fingers found their target. “Fghhhhhh!”


	8. Hobbs:  Aftermath

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this is the last chapter of this part. Sorry about the long wait, but real life got a little busy. Thanks to everyone who has been reading and especially to those who have left kudos and reviews.

Luke floated in a pleasant haze, not quite asleep but definitely not awake either, until a slight shift of his head managed to line his eye up with a beam of light from a lamp in the far corner of the room. He grimaced as he came back to full consciousness, and it took him a few moments to remember where he was, but when he did he remembered _everything_.

Shit.

They'd done it.

Technically they'd done it twice. Plus a mutual jerk-off session afterwards because he hadn't been able to find a third—fourth, rather, since Shaw had startled him into ripping the first clear in half, the bastard—condom, and Shaw had been too busy trying to drive him insane to go get one out of his own bag. Not that Luke had been particularly interested in interrupting him to convince him to go hunting at that point. The things the man could do with his hands were terrifying, what he could do with his tongue was enough to make Luke shiver in a way that had absolutely nothing to do with the temperature.

If you'd asked him half a day ago if what they'd done would even be possible he'd have...well, he might not have said 'no,' precisely, but he sure as hell wouldn't have said 'yes' either. Granted that they were both in damn good shape, and yeah, the pheromones had been running rampant, but Luke had crossed the forty mark a few years back and Shaw was a couple years older than him. There were limits. Or there were supposed to be, anyway.

Not that he hadn't enjoyed it. And given Shaw's enthusiasm Luke was reasonably confident that the other man had enjoyed things too, and not just because of bullshit biology. So that was good.

Of course, Shaw probably wasn't enjoying being pinned, or at least he wouldn't when he woke up, Luke realized abruptly, finally noticing that he was lying mostly on top of the other man rather than on the mattress. For once Luke was willing to bet that Shaw didn't have a sharp object on him, if only because he didn't exactly have anywhere left to keep one, but that wasn't likely to stop him from getting vicious if he found himself held down by a man a third again his size. Luke muttered an automatic apology as he lifted his upper body off the other man's back, intending to shift to the side and settle back down. Not that they wouldn't need to get up and clean up and all of that eventually, but between what they'd just done, the sleep he'd lost while they were trying to pretend Shaw's heat wasn't happening, the mission and the early start the day before...well, that stupid corner light wasn't even bothering him enough to convince him to find something heavy to throw at it never mind exert himself further than that.

He was starting to shift when his supporting arm was suddenly knocked out from under him, sending him back down onto Shaw with a grunt.

“_Comfortable_,” Shaw growled.

Oh. “You're awake,” Luke said slowly. Not exactly the most intelligent thing he could have said, but damned if he knew what would have been right that second. He'd had one-night stands before, sure, he'd even had one-night stands with a few people he'd worked with, but those had been one-off instances with people he might see every couple of years. Not with his for-all-intents-and-purposes partner, however much they'd both been willing. And enjoyed it.

Shaw made a distinctly annoyed sound. “Wouldn't be if you'd stop bloody _moving_.”

Luke hesitated for a moment and then shifted a little more until he was comfortable as well before putting his head back down and letting his eyes close again. He was exhausted, and his obnoxious caveman instincts were telling him to stay close to the omega. He wouldn't even consider acting on it if Shaw wasn't willing, obviously, but since he was, Luke wasn't going to fight it. The rest of it he—they—could figure out later.

When he woke up again the first thing he noticed was the lack of a warm body underneath him. The second thing was the much stronger desire to get up and grab a shower than he'd had the last time he'd awakened. The feel of bone-deep exhaustion was gone, though, and he took a moment to stretch and enjoy that fact before turning to look for the missing occupant of the safehouse. It wasn't much of a search since Shaw was fiddling with one of the knobs on the stove not twenty feet away, and after another yawn Luke rolled to his feet.

From the look of things Shaw had done a little cleanup already; the discarded condoms were gone and their clothes had been stacked up by the side table. Or what was left of their clothes, anyway, and Luke shook his head when he found the shorts he'd been looking for. “What the hell?” Not that he wasn't already well aware that Shaw carried a lot more muscle than most people realized, but he wasn't even sure what kind of grip it would take to tear the material along those lines. Or how he'd escaped some serious fabric burns in the process.

“Hm?” Shaw turned and then scoffed. “Oh, belt up. I couldn't even find all the pieces of my bloody button-down.”

“Yeah, well, it serves you right for wearing enough layers to clothe a small town,” Luke said after a moment. It wasn't like he could refute the accusation, even if he didn't remember that specific article of clothing.

“Have you forgotten that we're in Siberia?” Shaw shook his head. “I've said this before, you ought to think about blocking some of those head shots.”

He was both technically correct, at least about their location, and also being an ass since they were in a cabin with a perfectly functional heater, and Luke flipped him off just on principle before returning his attention to the pile of clothes. His shirt when he found it was in even rougher shape than the boxers, and he gave up on salvaging anything and dug a clean set out of his pack, pulling on the shorts before heading over to see what Shaw was doing with the stove. He hoped it involved starting breakfast. He also hoped that this wouldn't involve a lot of awkwardness. It wasn't like he didn't know what they'd agreed to—hell, he was the one who'd proposed it—and it wasn't like they weren't both grown men. And Shaw had seemed fine last night, fine a few seconds ago harassing him, just generally a hell of a lot more composed than Luke, if he wanted to be honest about it. But still....

He nudged Shaw lightly. “We're okay?”

Shaw looked confused for a moment, and then shrugged, and his lips twitched. “I'm good. Not sure about you. Needing all that extra sleep and all.”

Little shit. “Well, I mean, _I_ put in a fair amount of work last night.” Shaw opened his mouth to respond, but Luke gestured to the plastic wrap on the counter before he could say anything. “You could throw another one of those in, you know.” Breakfast was eggs, random vegetables that hadn't made it into soup, and some kind of sausage from the look of things, but even if he had no idea what kind since Shaw was the one who spoke Russian, he could already see that he could polish a single package off on his own without too much trouble.

Shaw scoffed but didn't argue the point. Then again, they'd worked together long enough that he knew how much food Luke could go through. Especially when he'd been exerting himself.

Shaw had obviously already showered—that and found another couple more layers somewhere; it was a good thing that he was smaller than Luke or he'd never fit that much material in his pack—and Luke was suddenly aware of just how much he needed to wash up. By the time he was fit for human company again the smell of cooking food was starting to spread, and since Shaw didn't seem to need any help Luke stripped the bed and went hunting for clean linens. He didn't find any, but a couple surplus army blankets would serve well enough until the sheets had washed. He realized partway through jamming the sheets into an undersized washer that Shaw was still putting out heat pheromones, albeit lightly enough that it wasn't causing any kind of reaction for Luke, and he nudged Shaw's arm again as he finished. “Seriously, are you all right?”

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I'm good. If it's going to get bad again it won't be until tonight, and even then it shouldn't be anything like before. Nothing to concern yourself with since I know it'd be a little rough on you to go again.”

Luke turned to lean against the counter, crossing his arms over his chest at the goading tone even as he felt his own smile trying to escape. “Rough on me? I can handle anything you can suggest, princess. Could even break some of this furniture with your face, first.” Since they had yet to have a sparring match which was pretty much unheard of for them after two days cooped up together, and never mind everything that had happened in the interim.

“See, now, that's just all those head shots talking again. If you ain't going to block them, you ought to at least see a doctor about your memory.”

Luke slid closer, deliberately pressing against him a bit. “I have, and he says that I am a perfect physical specimen.”

Shaw pressed back, not that Luke had expected anything else. “Must have low—” The scramble on the stove spluttered loudly, and when it stopped he grimaced and wiped a splatter of grease off his neck. “Standards. Apparently grub's up.”

Food was enough to distract both of them, at least temporarily, and Luke pulled two dishes down out of the cabinet and handed one over. Shaw had added a second pack of sausage from the look of things, and he didn't feel the least bit of guilt as he piled up his plate after Shaw had taken what he wanted. Although given how quickly Shaw cleared his first helping and then grabbed most of what was left over for seconds, Luke figured that he wasn't quite at a hundred percent yet no matter what he was claiming.

Instead of immediately resuming their argument after they finished, Luke offered a hand for Shaw's plate and moved to clean up the kitchen. Shaw had cooked, after all, and no one was going to get here to pick them up until at least tomorrow so there was still plenty of time for that fight. And another round if Shaw was really interested, because he sure as hell wasn't going to say no. Especially since their partnership seemed to have come through intact, right down to the sniping. He was pretty damn okay with that, all things considered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A question about people's preferences--there's actually a second part that should go with this. It takes place starting several months after and has much bigger time jumps, though (more a series of interconnected one-shots leading up to an end). Do people prefer it as a separate story linked to this one, or as chapters 9+, or some other mechanism? Personally I'm thinking separate given that this is a much tighter story time-and-spacewise, but figured I'd see how people who are actually reading it rather than writing it feel.


End file.
